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Sunday, June 17, 2012

Rude 39 Chapter 3

Happy Father's Day, everyone! I just got back from a wonderful afternoon with my own father, so as a gift, we have a special Father's Day installment of Rude 39! Well, in that Satomi's father appears once again! I'm totally not reaching for holiday significance, here!!

Thanks to Skutieos for the cleaning, Biggums for the superb redraws, and especially to Kazuhiko for going down to the library and downloading the cleans and translation from the internet, there, and finishing the chapter before he went home!

"That girl will never pay any mind to the block I put up to try and stop her... and no matter what, will always find another route to get around them."

Okay, I changed the title from "The Pachinko Maze" (what I put in the table of contents) to "Race to the Trigger" because I had no freaking idea what the word "Chakka" meant when I was translating the table of contents back in Chapter 1. I was able to figure out that it referred to the Trigger Hole through the context in Chapter 2, but back in chapter 1 I had absolutely no clue, and couldn't figure it out by flipping through chapter 3. I saw that Katagiri took a weird route to get to the trigger hole, so I likened it to a maze and titled it as such. But now I have more of a clue on pachinko terminology, so I was able to figure out its actual name, "Trigger Battle", which I stylized as "Race to the Trigger".

As for the chapter itself, I consider this the best chapter of Rude 39 yet, simply because of the dynamics between Katagiri and Kiori (Satomi's dad). Page 064 was the most hilarious thing in a FKMT manga I've read in quite some time... not just because Kiori takes a long pause in between "KATAGIRI" and "...-san", but because he sees Satomi clinging onto Katagiri, so his manners require him to address Katagiri as his daughter's significant other, forcing him to add on the -San suffix even though he is steaming in fury. Satomi's clingyness to katagiri also makes for some "d'awwww" moments, followed by some laughs when Kiori rages even harder.

Kiori is a businessman and does not take risks, so he tries to make their little wager impossible for Katagiri to win by twisting the nails so that they block off the normal route to the Trigger Hole. He also looks down on Katagiri, and thinks of him as a hopeless gambler, who would take on a million-to-one chance for a high enough prize for winning. And million-to-one is much better odds than he thinks he has given Katagiri with the wager, certainly much closer to zero. But Katagiri sees an opportunity that gives him rather good odds of winning, so he takes on the bet.

The physics in this chapter weren't exactly realistic... The ball would lose momentum by the time it would need to "leap" over the gap between the left nails and the ones leading to the trigger hole, meaning that it'd probably arc downwards rather than going in a perfectly straight line. With enough of an arc, it would still be possible by breaking through the small gap in the nails above the trigger, but that's not what happened. It was still a pretty interesting strategy, just not one that anyone should go out and bet money on.

But I'd say the real interesting part of this chapter came in the final pages, where Satomi steals her father's car keys and drives off into the sunset with Katagiri. While this could be seen as an act of mercy given that her dad had bet 5 Million Yen on the match, that car was pretty expensive and her dad didn't consent to it. But it all ties to the message that Kiori gives at the end of the chapter... you can't control your children; for any blocks you put up to try and hold them back, they will always find a way around them if what they really want is on the other side. Though it might be hard to hear for some fathers out there, this is a very realistic and heartfelt message for our Father's Day release. For all the fathers out there (hey, there might be one or two!)... if you love them, let them go.

4 comments:

Your message about Father's having to let go rings deeper than it seems. I too enjoyed a great Father's Day. And as someone who is going off to college, then the need for a Father to let go is even greater.